mpressions which they produce. The
interchange of gifts and tokens around the Christmas tree follows
most appropriately, and the Christmas feast is marked by profuse
hospitality and keen enjoyment unmarred by riot or excess.

Ah, well! there are piles of dusty memories in the old cockloft still
untouched, but I shall rummage no more to-night. The scenes which have
floated past me with the wreathing smoke of my cigar are green and
fragrant to me with a freshness which time can never blight, but they
never can harden into reality again for any mortal experience. They
have gone into the irretrievable past with a state of things which
some may regret and others rejoice in, and well will it be if the new
_regime_ shall supply their places with other pictures which twenty
years hence it may be no less pleasant to remember.

ROBERT WILSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A GERMAN AGRICULTURAL FAIR.

From the 27th to the 30th of September all Stuttgart flocks to
Cannstatt for the _Volksfest_; and this year every good Wuertemberger
was bound to feel an additional interest in the fete on account of
the opening ceremony, the inauguration of a statue to the late king,
Wilhelm I.--and "well beloved," one is tempted to add from the way
in which his people still speak of him. "The old king" and "this one"
they say with an inflection of voice anything but flattering to
the latter. Our landlady assures us that let the weather look as
threatening as it would, the sun always contrived to burst out when in
former times the late king rode into the arena to give the prizes; and
she is evidently by no means certain it will not pour all three days
of the fair this year. However, to judge from the skies, "this one" is
not so bad as he might be: the sun shines propitious on him too, and
consequently on us as we set forth to see what we can see. The second
is the great day, as the prizes are then distributed; but already on
Monday the booths and shows were on the field, and Cannstatt was gay
with banners and wreaths and garlands of green. The carpenters were
still hard at work hammering at seats for us to occupy next day,
but the wonderful triumphal arch stood quite completed and worthy of
sincere admiration. No one knows who has not seen it worked into an
architectural design how beautiful a string of onions can be, how
gorgeous a row of vegetable-marrows, how delicate a cluster of
turnips. It sounds puerile, but it was lovely nevertheless.